April 1999
Geraldine N. Tortorella is a partner of the firm Shamberg Marwell Hocherman Davis & Hollis, P.C., Mt. Kisco, New York. She has expertise in the fields of zoning, land use, environmental and real estate law and she advises clients on the statutory and regulatory requirements governing the development of real property in New York. Ms. Tortorella routinely appears before legislative, planning and zoning boards throughout Westchester and surrounding counties to process applications to rezone land, for site and subdivision approvals and for variances and ordinance interpretations. She also regularly finds herself defending the rights of private property owners in State Supreme Court, the Appellate Division and the Court of Appeals against unreasonable regulation.
With her partner, Stuart Shamberg, Ms. Tortorella recently completed a complex, lengthy regulatory takings trial arising out of the rezoning of her client’s property to prohibit a crushed stone quarry. She and the firm were instrumental in challenging the constitutionality of a northern Westchester community’s zoning ordinance that excluded realistic opportunities for multi-family and affordable housing and obtained for the firm’s client an attorney’s fee award in excess of $425,000. She has successfully challenged a Long Island municipality’s denial of her client’s application to develop a multi-plex theater and wholesale club and a Westchester municipality’s imposition of a $565,000 recreation fee condition on a client’s subdivision approval.
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